From another thread- thought I'd move it here...

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AstroAg17 said:
How can we possibly know objective reality?

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An interesting question, but it derails this thread. It is a more fundamental question than the OP seems to need. He/she seems to already accept we can know things.

One of the easiest ways to approach this is to take the side of 'we cannot know objective reality.'

This quickly slides into absurdity or an unpleasantness most people would not accept.

First, the very position is dependent upon knowing an objective reality (the law that states we cannot know objective reality).

Secondly, if we claim it is impossible to know objective reality- why educate ourselves? Why do anything?

I like to use the example of getting punched in the face to address both this question as well as the 'how do we know we exist' question.

It is all good and valuable to debate these things, but if someone comes up and punches you in the face, then you realize:
1- objective existence beyond you is real (a hard fist to the nose)
2- we exist, because something else that exists (see 1) just caused you pain which you could not control

Everything is a possibility, but not every possibility is reasonable. Those that claim that everything is an illusion usually don't give all of their "illusionary" money away.

This is an important point. No one chooses to act like "reality" doesn't exist. Stated another way, no one acts like all interpretations are equally valid.

DirtDiver go brush up on your Hume and Kant before you post in here again.

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Your perspective entirely misses the point. That my money is not objectively important does not mean it's unimportant to me.

Your post is akin to someone claiming that since money is just cloth, nobody should value it. I can put value on whatever I want.

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I think by some of these statements I'm being misunderstood somewhere. I'll try to rephrase.

I was just pointing out inconsistancies that we sometimes observe. I also think there's a difference between the words we are using. Let me rephrase, if I say the entire world is an illusion, then physical dollars in my world view would also be an illusion. However if I treat them as real, or with ojective value then I'm living life inconsististant with my claims.

Money may have value to you, but if you believe this world is an illusion and money is in fact an illusion then you would be ascribing value to something that is not really there.

Why trust logic? Just because logic says something assumes another starting point.

Reality exists because the alternative I can't understand (even if this is illusory where / why am I?).

But we underexperience reality - this is or existence as experience. And it's demonstrable that we don't experience anything directly or completely.

So experiences that affirm or rejects various models or posits is our understanding of truth and reality. But even this is entirely subjective based on personal experience. And probably each person's ability to interpret the satsifactory nature of the models they have developed to fit their data.

I can't see a way beyond individual realities except by mutual agreement that both are sharing something (in at least partial ignorance).

Even if it is a simulation my point is that there's something that is real because the other solution is trivial. I.e., I do not exist, there is no such thing as reality.

Yes. So from there if something exists and I exist within it, the next question is how faithful is my experience versus what is actually happening? And to me, the answer seems to be "probably not very" even for my immediate surroundings.

Whether we're talking about frame of reference artifacts or sensory perception limitations or simple ignorance leading to poor conclusions, I think it's the same.

When you really boil it down everything becomes sort of trusted assumptions and we all pick our facts. We pretend we don't and we have mutually agreed-upon "solid" footings in some things....but we also gloss over corrections to these with surprising ease from time to time. Rationalization and cognitive dissonance are as human as sleeping and eating.

So when people start to talk about sky magic and yadda yadda science this and that I'm always reminded of Quine's assertion that the posit of homer's gods and the existence of solids are not different in kind, only in usefulness as tools to understand realty.

And it's in this frame of reference that I would ask the OP in the other thread - would homers gods be a good model to use for evaluating a chemical reaction? Probably not. Why use unrelated posits (ie observable phenomena) to evaluate something that we all agree is beyond immediate observation?

The existence of the afterlife is a posit for my intellect, my perception, my mind, to deal with reality. Just like every other posit I have.

It's both.

Quine describes all human knowledge as a field of posits with true discovery at the boundary. Obviously the closer to the hypothetical center a posit is the more mutual support it enjoys. To cancel one you have to cancel many others. But they're all falsifiable, right? Even if it means you kick down the whole things? (Classical physics vs quantum comes to mind...)?

Yep. I agree. Which is why all posits are the same in kind and only differ in their usefulness, which of course is entirely subjective. Both as personal usefulness and in the greater sense of explaining the model they are describing.

It's all turtles models, all the way down.

When I say true discovery at the boundary I don't mean the center, I meant the periphery. Where new posits are created. True discovery would be a uniquely new experience which necessitates a new posit by way of explanation.

At this rim of interaction with reality by necessity posits are cycled through as new data becomes available.

Yes. But they're all posits and subject to the reality. It is not dissimilar to the problem of paradox and truth statements in language. You objected to a similar construct in the other thread about God and God speaking the truth. Just replace God with "apparent reality" and truth with "verification". The system truth statements exist within the system, i.e., are themselves posits.


...unless you're a Platonist and assume that math or logic or other abstract objects are real and exist independently of our reality.

Put another way -- mathematical modes vary in the accuracy or fidelity with regard to the system they describe. Some are better than others, they have varying quality which is really a judgment on their predictive value.

But they're all models, or posts. Differing in quality but not kind.

A perfect model doesn't become real.

...does it?

I'm not a solipsist. I'm just decidedly not a logical positivist.